The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Scot Sothern is a very innovative photographer. For this project he decided to mingle with the Hollywood Boulevard people, assuming the guise and behavior of a street person. As people passed by, he yelled “Hey, look at me!” and snapped their pictures with a disposable film camera with flash. A... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This small artist book presents a large challenge. Swedish photographer Helga Härenstam has created a hand-assembled photobook of 34 images just about 4 1/2 inches square in overall size; there is no text inside, so you are dependent on your reactions to the images and on your intuitions. The title... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • There are a number of reviews of photobooks about warfare that I have reviewed over the years. You can enter war in the search box and look at as many of them as you like. But none of them are as comprehensive, as complex, and as personal as this one,... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Berlin is most certainly a very complex and dynamic European city. The population includes people from all kinds of countries with all kinds of backgrounds, and at the same time the city shows a great deal of tolerance regarding behavioral idiosyncrasies and various belief systems when you compare it to... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • George Hoyningen-Huene was one of the foremost fashion and celebrity photographers of his time. He was also a participant in filmmaking and various other pursuits. Born in St. Petersburg in 1900, surrounded by Baltic-Russian nobility as well as having part American heritage, he was able to transition, via London and... Continue Reading →
Review by Paul Anderson • Memories came flooding back to me as I paged through Todd Hido’s 2023 photobook The End Sends Advance Warning. When I was growing up in the upper Midwest, there were moments of a winter’s evening when the combination of cold, clouds, a blurry sun and the stillness of open spaces produced a... Continue Reading →
By Douglas Stockdale, portraits by Donna Cosentino • I just received notice of the recent passing of Wayne Swanson (1951 – 2024) on Wednesday, June 5th, 2024 after a protracted illness. Wayne was a very talented photobook reviewer, a friend and a Contributing Editor of PhotoBook Journal (2019 - 2024), whose legacy with us includes 70 succinct... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • As the old saying goes, “Home is where your heart is.” Epic poems and countless songs have been written on the topic; missing home, coming home, longing for home... “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, “Home on the Range”, “There’s No Place like Home”... but what if you have no home? What if... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • Lisa McCord’s “Rotan Switch” is a superb synthesis of content, design, and emotion…more than a story, more than photos, more than a book, it’s an experience. The design is unique and subtly compelling. At first look, the white space, the seemingly random text blocks, and the image arrangement didn’t click... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The documentation of animal life all around us has long been a favorite area of photography. This very important volume illuminates animal photography of all sorts from a vast number of angles, featuring a number of photographers who concentrate on documenting animal life, as well as essays dealing with animal... Continue Reading →
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